Telecommunications is a rapidly evolving industry that has exploded in recent years with many types of services and supporting systems coming to market. The convergence of the Internet and wireless communications has opened the door for providing services that heretofore were not available to the cellular user. The use of mobile terminal devices such as cellular telephones is growing at rates that greatly exceed even the most optimistic predictions of only a few years ago. Cellular telephones have been widely accepted because they are inexpensive and allow individuals to move about freely yet stay in contact with friends, and further, to function as sources of entertainment. Companies are rushing to provide improved multimedia functionality in mobile terminals and/or cellular networks such that the mobile subscriber (or user) can enjoy audio and video content, for example.
Mobile subscribers are interested in at least the same wide variety of content which can be accessed via computers on global IP networks such as the Internet. For example, subscribers can input requests to providers for multimedia services that include information related to news, weather, traffic, stock information, game downloading, ring tone music downloads, streaming video content, and more. For some of these services such as streaming video or game downloading, subscribers are more cost conscious rather than caring about the specific time of the day the services can be provided. Moreover, for some of these services, many subscribers may desire common content and not care if they receive the service via a broadcast technology or peer-to-peer technique.
If a cellular operator is to support the duplicated services in a peer-to-peer manner, the operator has to invest in network capacity and operation expense. To recover the associated costs, the operator then has to charge the subscribers a higher rate even though the subscribers may not care if the content is delivered via a more economical technique such as a shared network resource. Consequently, the cost concerns associated with higher subscriber rates charged for peer-to-peer services can reduce the use of the above services by the mobile subscriber.
The broadcast service allows many users to receive the same service while using substantially reduced network resources as compared to providing the same via peer-to-peer transmissions. Accordingly, the operator can realize lower costs which will reflect in lower rates to the subscribers. In turn, the lower service charge will boost the demand on the services to improve the operator's revenue and profit margin. Additionally, data traffic is considered to be asymmetrical. In general, downlink data traffic occupies more bandwidth than uplink traffic in many data service categories, which implies opportunities for controlled, scheduled multimedia broadcast services and solutions.
Multimedia broadcast/multicast service (MBMS) is a technology for distributing multimedia content (e.g., mobile television (TV), streaming video, audio) over GSM (global system for mobile communications) and UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system) cellular networks to mobile terminals (or handsets). MBMS is a 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) feature that provides multiple users with multimedia content from a single information source (a point-to-multipoint bearer service connection), and is applied only in the downlink using a common channel that is viewable by selected subscribers. The network and radio transmission resources for MBMS are utilized in an effective way via optimized downlink transmissions and shared network entities.
The MBMS broadcast function provides services to all subscribers, but cannot control selective subscription to provider content. The subscribers will be given either free service or pay a fee regardless if they use the service or not.
The MBMS multicast function provides comprehensive subscriber and session management capabilities for each MBMS subscriber in GSM and UMTS networks, and in each cell or sector. The function requires uplink communications for interaction between the service and the user and downlink communications for receiving the content.
However, MBMS multicast introduces substantial overhead processing in all of the nodes and interfaces. As a result, this function is not substantially more cost effective than the peer-to-peer solution. Thus, the MBMS multicast and broadcast services cannot provide sufficiently cost effective services from both operator and customer perspectives.